the mystery of the calbee cards

while doing research for a future project, I noticed something strange… was it a figment of my imagination? or had a phantom kamen rider appeared?! read on to find out!

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project projections and presents

I was chugging along with some research project or other when I came up against a snag – an intriguing and engrossing snag, but a snag nonetheless. all will be revealed in time, but for now: I went down a whirlwind of tangents and historical documentation just to find one single clip of one single location, but I believe I have finally located its origin, after much frustration and hair-pulling… and, this super sweet guy I know may have helped me procure a copy of said materials, which may or may not have involved a fierce bidding war – and may in fact be on its way here just in time for my birthday…!!!? if I had to put how I feel into words, it’d be something like this:

spotted a fun lil shonen tanteidan reference

came across it while reading through Ghost Hunt for a future project :^)

read right to left

Kamen Rider Cafe Culture – rating system

as observant readers will know, I am a huge fan of the tokusatsu franchise kamen rider – having watched the whole thing (watching week-to-week these days, as it airs), one thing that always stuck out to me was that cafes, bars and restaurants crop up in over half the seasons, often serving as some kind of “HQ” for the lead characters to come back to. so, I got to thinking – I should review these joints! both as dining establishments, but also to try and understand a little bit more about what purpose they serve in the plot as a whole. read on to hear more about the rating system I’ve been devising as the first part of this series!

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Detectives These Days Are (driving me) Crazy

I’ve been watching less and less anime as it airs these days – perhaps because I prefer watching things once they’re complete, or maybe it’s because of hype fatigue… whatever the core reason, taste-testing my first show of the summer 2025 season certainly did not fill me with confidence that my viewing habits would change any time soon. if you’ve been round these parts for any amount of time, what piqued my interest about this show should be immediately obvious – a past-his-prime, ex-teen detective, aging out of precociousness while taking on a high school girl as his assistant? sounds like themes I’m interested in as a baseline, certainly, so I was bound to check it out. which, with hindsight, I rather wish I hadn’t! what left me feeling so sour about Detectives These Days Are Crazy? read on to find out! 

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old project, new resolve

recently, while digging through the convoluted, gnarled (and frankly, precarious) organizational system I call my computer to find an image to explain some tangent or other, I stumbled on the scattered remains of a project that I started several years ago which never came to fruition. later, while brushing the dust off and checking out what was there, I felt quite fond of the work I had done – so I’ve decided to try my hand at it again! I can’t say when I’ll have anything to show for it – restarting something where you left off before often leaves you with a lot of effort wasted just trying to understand your own shorthand – but I’m hoping to have the beginnings of this new (old) long-form project out sometime soon!!

I’m excited to be working on it again, but I know how foolish posts like this are. so, you can either picture me behind the scenes as quietly diligent, or – in the event that the project comes to nothing again – boisterously overconfident (as below) ;^)

edogawa ranpo covers part 6 – curse of the fiend with twenty (five) poplars

while trawling the web for more edogawa ranpo covers (as I am often known to do), I stumbled on a puzzling cache of detective novels shrouded in mystery – was ranpo among the illustrious authors? were the rip-roaring covers eerie… or eerily familiar? and what will I do when confronted with an actual phantom novel?! read on to find out!

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edogawa ranpo covers part 5 – the edge of kodansha-hunting

as I’ve been looking for various versions of the edogawa ranpo boy detective series, there’s one edition that stood out from the rest – read on to learn more about this hair-raising kodansha selection, their unreal cover illustrations, illusive authorship and perhaps… a connection to kamen rider?!

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edogawa ranpo covers part 4 and a half – a poplar interlude

while hunting for the edogawa ranpo covers from my last post (the ones rewritten to include the boy detectives) I found a funny little oddity: an edition of the rewrites that also included… something mysterious!? read on… if you’ve got the nerve!!!

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edogawa ranpo covers part 4 – the fiend with twenty poplars

after finding the original 26 shonen tanteidan book covers from this poplar edition, I had no idea I might find more – let alone 20! a mystery was certainly afoot… and I planned to solve it. read on – if you dare!!

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